Hitchin’ Post


nize-baby-10-16-1927.jpg

It looks like Isidore is up to no good in NIZE BABY from 10/16/1927.  Again, Milt Gross the wanna-be animator comes to the fore as “Baba” struggles manfully to keep from waking up the baby. Gross uses speed lines galore and some really tortured anatomy to show Papa’s extreme caution. I love the dialog in the last panel, “Morris, not in the head…”

 krazy_vintage11-6.gifkrazy_vintage11-7.gifkrazy_vintage11-8.gifkrazy_vintage11-9.gifkrazy_vintage11-10.gifkrazy_vintage11-11.gif

Krazy Kat (11/6/1939 to 11/11) is mostly visual gags about a “Road Closed” sign, with Krazy, Ignatz and Pupp mixing it up along the route. Garge evidently ran out of Road gags about Friday, so brings in Joe Stork to wind up the week. Krazy, Ignatz and Pupp run away from the stork when they suspect that he carries an infant. Ignatz has the most right to run off, he already has three kids!

mike-6-17.jpgmike-6-18.jpgmike-6-19.jpgmike-6-20.jpgmike-6-21.jpgmike-6-22.jpg

Marvelous Mike (6/17/1957 to 6/22) continues the “Puttin’ Mike” storyline as Crump gears up for the big match against Smith. Smith has agreed to let Mike hit Crump’s putt shots for him, but first Cliff has to get a ball on the green and in the 6/22 he makes a real duffer shot into the rough. We’ll see if he can recover the match next time.

felix-5-25-36-iv.jpgfelix-5-26-36-iv.jpgfelix-5-27-36-iv.jpgfelix-5-28-36-iv.jpgfelix-5-29-36-iv.jpg

 Felix the Cat (5/25/1936  to 5/29) continues Felix’s adventures in the Dooit home. I love the visual pun of Snobb’s dropping his “H’s” on Felix’s tail in the 5/27 episode. Uncle Minus figures quite a bit in these strips as well. Otto Messmer gets a lot of comedy mileage out of Snobb’s easily offended aristocratic attitude. The run of Felix dailies I am using has quite a lot of missing episodes, like 5/30/1936 this time, which was a Saturday. These are rare, so I’ll keep running what I can find. Does anyone know if Dell’s “Popular Comics” from the 1940s ever ran these Felix dailies?

Look out in stores or on Amazon for “The Toon Treasury of Classic Children’s Comics”, edited by Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly, published by Abrams ComicArts, New York. Mike Barrier and Kim Deitch were both advisers on the book, which is a collection of comic book stories from the 1940s and 1950s aimed at children. Of course at $40.00 a copy, I doubt if many children today will be buying this one. Hopefully their local libraries will carry it. It’s a nice selection of stories by Barks, Kelly, Carlson, Davis, Mayer and many more. The reason I have the book is, Francoise Mouly borrowed my copy of “Laffy-Daffy Comics #1” at Mike Barrier’s suggestion (Thanks, Mike!). They used one page from it, “Droopy (not Avery’s) in ‘Snow Day'” by Dan Gordon. Look for it on page 206, an eerie little story. The reproduction in the book is good, not too fussed over or “restored” looking, I like my comic book reprints looking a bit yellowed with out-of-register color, and that’s what you will get here. Of course for your $40.00, you now have these comic pages on much better paper with much less acid. I don’t think we’ll ever see such a rich legacy of so-called “children’s” comic book stories ever again. These days, it’s “Super-Heroes” or die! This old kid will really enjoy this book, that’s certain.

Recent Posts


Archives